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California officials announced today that more than a quarter of the state’s 278 parks will close to take a bite out of Sacramento’s $15.2 billion deficit. Parks spokesperson Roy Stearns said it’s unclear how Governor Jerry Brown’s budget revision — scheduled for Monday — will affect the plan, but if slashings proceed as predicted, the closures begin this fall and end by July 2012.

No parks within Santa Barbara County are included on the final hit list — made when legislators voted in March to cut the department’s budget by $11 million this year and $22 million next year — but a number of nearby destinations, popular with area residents, are lined under the axe. McGrath State Beach in Oxnard, Morro Strand in Morro Bay, and Limekiln and Garrapata parks in Monterey County are all expected to close.

According to Stearns, many factors went into choosing which forests and beaches to shut down. Generated revenue, number of visitors, educational relevance, and contracts with private companies that run stores and restaurants were considered.

When asked what a closed park means for the wannabe visitor, Stearns said simply: “We prefer people don’t go there.” Gates will be locked, he explained, and there won’t be any rangers to come to people’s aid or personnel to maintain facilities. Stearns said trespassers will be asked to leave, and cited if “push comes to shove.”

During the November 2010 election, environmental groups tried in vain to help the ailing state park system by placing a proposition on the ballot that, if passed, would have used personal $18 vehicle registration fees to pay for statewide staffing and upkeep. In-state taxpayers would then be offered free day parking at any site for the year. The bid failed, though, earning only 40.7 percent of the vote.

Comments

An utter shame that so many of these places are just going to be wiped out of a traveler's itinerary either for its natural beauty or historical significance.

And how can the state stop people from visiting these places? If the state owns them and does not wish to allow anyone to use or visit these places, then they should sell or transfer them to national oversight.

It is truly disgusting that we cannot manage our vast amounts of money generated by state revenues with any sense of logic. We bail out corporate criminals who have defrauded our citizens and yet take more and more away from those very citizens.

I suppose I should not be surprised these same corporations who spend BILLIONS in TV ads have not offered or proposed setting aside some of that money to sponsor and keep all of these places open and available.

This state, this nation is not going to hell in a handbasket . . . it's already there.

Nobody ever speaks about the toll the 911 Twin Towers attack has taken on our present situation. We - the US - has spent these trillions of dollars in war and security expenses because of 911. Now we are having to pay for it and this is the result: no money for daily living because we have to now pay for the war debt. Most money spend was from Bid Laden's attack and the attacks against the US in the few years prior. And then huge expense was generated by Bush's war against Iraq to get control of oil.

Only now, under Obama's rule, have we gone after Bin Laden. Hopefully now we can stop wasting money over there on wars and stop the bleeding so that we can pay for things like our Nation Parks, after school programs, social services for the poor and needy.

If the state's only option is to lease out on a short term basis for private contract operators, this is a better option than having to close them off to all use. It's the lesser of two evils. Maybe contracting out to local governments may be an option, but SB County is a fiscal joke now, so they wouldn't be an options. Maybe go with surrounding cities to take over operations.

We are going to see this in our SB County Parks soon. Closures, resident rangers getting the boot from there homes at Manning, Toro Canyon and Waller just to name a few. The current director has no clue on the budget with this department going from meeting budget targets to being over $600,000 upside down this year. Worse since Terri Maus Nisich was the absent director of parks

Schwarzenegger hiked the camping fees to $35/night (fairer and better would have been to charge a lesser amount, eg., $20, per adult); Brown now wants to close 70 parks. I doubt that any of the highly paid legislators take their vacations in campgrounds because that's the only place they can afford. Now, for many starting this fall, that will be out. This is wrong when there is such waste in the state as is shown by today's LAT story: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-...

So one quarter of the parks are closing from a loss of eleven million dollars. Somehow I doubt this is one quarter of their budget. At this rate soon we may have a state parks department and NO open parks.

Please don't let financial ineptitude at the state level affect our opposition to the upcoming money grab proposal to charge beach access fees here at the county level. S.B. County Parks Dept. will be coming back in the fall with a poposal to charge beach access fees at Goleta, Hendry's, Overlook (Summerland) and Rincon Parks. Please folks , this is not a done deal . Email your County Supervisors and express your opposition to this proposal . Then show up at the public workshops ( to be re-scheduled "sometime in the fall") and let the Parks Dept. and our Supes know what a bad idea this is.